Edmund McMillen has making gross games for a while now, and he joins us as we explore the guts of his latest gross-cute card game, Tapeworm

Words by Christopher John Eggett

Edmund McMillen is probably best known as ‘the The Binding of Isaac guy’ – a videogame that blends top-down shooter, roguelike and childhood trauma to powerful, if gross effect. This writer remembers Edmund McMillen from the early day indie game forums that preceded the, now very popular, itch.io and other services. A movement of small, weird game makers emerged from flash game sites like Newgrounds and imbued the scene with a taste for retro visuals, daft and gruesome humour, and a limited amount of taste.

We’re here to talk to McMillen about his new game, Tapeworm, but first asked him to draw a line between those early days of the indie video game scene to today.

“So I started making flash games in the very early 2000s, but the first game I made any money with was Gish (2004), after that I really didn’t make a dime till 2008 when I started releasing more polished sponsored flash titles like Meat Boy, Aether, Time Fcuk, Coil and Spewer, all of which had won awards and gotten the attention of larger publishers. By 2010 I had released Super Meat Boy on consoles and it did really well,” says McMillian of approaching the cusp of his biggest success, “a year after that I released a small flash game called The Binding of Isaac that ended up eclipsing my previous work ten-fold. Since then I’ve released many expansions for Isaac, and few really neato games – The End is Nigh and The Legend of Bumbo [a prequel to The Binding of Isaac] but two years back I released my first physical card game, The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls.” Four Souls was a card game which emulated the digital outing closely in spirit, it was kleptomaniac, loot-grabbing and occasionally cruel.